Socially Anxious? 3 Methods to Move Towards Relief
You want to belong to a group, to fit in and be liked. This can feel nearly impossible when anxiety is riddling your body and mind with panicky thoughts, alarm bells and confusion. In this interview between Olga Khazan and social anxiety expert, Stefan G. Hofman, from the social anxiety program at Boston University, Hofman outlines how a combination of cognitive-behavioral therapy and exposure techniques can lead clients towards symptom relief. If you find that you are avoiding social situations (which is probably even more prevalent during the pandemic), then it may be time to take a look at ways to cope with your anxiety— which is entirely workable!
Most people experiencing social anxiety believe that they prefer to be on their own, that avoiding the situations that scare them the most is the best way to move forward. Inevitably, this can lead to missed opportunities at work, in friendships and in love. Everyone wants to have connection, care, to be liked and accepted and yet anxiety can interrupt the natural need for companionship and belonging.
According to the Atlantic article and also in my own observation in private practice, the following 3 methods help with socially anxious symptoms:
Taking the leap to see a therapist
When you have social anxiety, it can be daunting to even consider stepping into a therapy office. During the pandemic, the good news is that most clients are starting virtually in the comfort of their own homes. This is a great first step and the beginning to having a relationship with your thoughts and feelings and how they are connected to your actions (or inactions.) Becoming more aware of how your mind and body operates can put you in the driver’s seat to make choices about how you would like to interact with others. In the therapy room, you are also gradually exposing your inner world to another person in a safe and comfortable way. You are practicing being intimate with someone in a contained environment with no negative repercussions!
You work with your thoughts
If you have social anxiety, you most likely have activating, fearful thoughts about interacting with others with the worst-case scenario. You may be fearful of public speaking, introducing yourself to other parents outside your kid’s school, or going on a date. In all of these instances, you have beliefs about the worst possible thing happening—in the world of cognitive-behavioral therapy, this is known as catastrophic thinking. In therapy, you would learn to identify your activating thoughts and replace them with a more balanced view— such as catastrophe X, Y, Z could happen but it is more likely that a lesser version would happen. And even if the worst DID happen, you can play through exactly what you would do in your body, speech and mind to ameliorate the situation.
You expose yourself to more and more social situations
In order to begin to realize the worst-case scenario doesn’t usually happen, you have to expose yourself to more and more social situations. Even if the worst does occur, you will find that it isn’t actually as bad as you may play out in your own mind. When you play the worst out in your own mind, your body follows by setting off alarm bells that something is severely wrong—you are under attack, there is a threat and you may even feel like you might die. Your stress response has aligned social situations with being a very severe threat— the stress response rings the alarm bells when you are about to go to a social event and this usually leads to avoiding the event. In therapy, you may work towards exposing yourself more and more to the activating events to find that your body gets sent into an alarm/activated state but the worst doesn’t actually happen— you don’t actually die from being social. The more and more exposure your body and mind has to these situations, the more you find you can tolerate the distress of speaking to others and potentially “saying the wrong thing” or having to feel the uncomfortable feelings of self-consciousness.
